(i) Technical Field
The present invention relates to a charging member, a charging device, a process cartridge, and an image forming apparatus.
(ii) Related Art
In an image forming apparatus employing an electrophotographic system, charges are formed on the surface of an image holding member, which includes a photoconducting photoreceptor formed of an inorganic or organic material, by the use of a charging device, an electrostatic latent image is formed thereon by the use of laser light obtained by modulating an image signal, and the electrostatic latent image is developed with charged toner to form a visualized toner image. Then, the toner image is electrostatically transferred to a transferring material such as a recording sheet via an intermediate transfer member or directly and is fixed to the recording material, whereby a desired reproduced image can be obtained.
The charging device performs an important function of charging a charging object such as the image holding member and is roughly classified into a contact type charging device coming in direct contact with the image holding member and charging the image holding member and a non-contact type charging device charging the image holding member in the vicinity of the image holding member without coming into contact with the image holding member by corona discharge or the like. Recently, charging devices employing a contact charging type in which secondary generation of ozone or nitrogen oxide due to the discharge is reduced have increased more and more.